The heat is removed from the reactor core by a cooling system that uses the heat to generate steam, which drives a steam turbine connected to a generator producing electricity.[124]

Following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, it has been estimated that if Japan had never adopted nuclear power, accidents and pollution from coal or gas plants would have caused more lost years of life.[235]

Nuclear power proponents argue that renewable energy sources such as wind and solar do not offer the scalability necessary for a large scale decarbonization of the electric grid, mainly due to their intermittency.[262][263]

S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission concluded constituted a significant subsidy.[146] Many countries have now liberalized the electricity market where these risks, and the risk of cheaper competitors emerging before capital costs are recovered, are borne by plant suppliers and operators rather than consumers, which leads to a significantly different evaluation of the economics of new nuclear power plants.[147]

Reprocessing can potentially recover up to 95% of the remaining uranium and plutonium in spent nuclear fuel, putting it into new mixed oxide fuel. This produces a reduction in long term radioactivity within the remaining waste, since this is largely short-lived fission products, and reduces its volume by over 90%.

It is often argued that this potential shortfall in liability represents an external cost not included dê uma olhada aqui in the cost of nuclear electricity; but the cost is small, amounting to about 0.1% of the levelized cost of electricity, according to a CBO study.[288]

In August 1945, the first widely distributed account of nuclear energy, in the form of the pocketbook The Atomic Age, discussed the peaceful future uses of nuclear energy and depicted a future where fossil fuels would go unused.

Newer Generation III reactors also achieve a more efficient use of the available resources than the generation II reactors which make up the vast majority of reactors worldwide.[159]

Reprocessing of civilian fuel from power reactors is currently done in Europe, Russia, Japan, and India. The full potential of reprocessing had not been achieved as of 2013 because it requires breeder reactors, which were not commercially available at that time.[211][212]